Unobtrusive health monitoring is highly beneficial for maintaining health and independence of high risk and chronic disease patients. Intelligent wearable sensor systems with simple installation, minimal maintenance and user involvement can be the best method for ubiquitous health monitoring.
Wearable sensor systems in form of smart clothing can contribute tremendously to self-defined and autonomous (at home) living with improved quality of life. They are cost effective and provide lightweight simple technical infrastructure. Existing ambulatory recording equipment rely on conventional silver-silver chloride (Ag—AgCl) gel electrodes to perform long term monitoring. Such gel based electrodes cannot be adapted to clothing as re-usable sensors. Plane conductive textile based electrodes do not form a good quality contact and are susceptible to ambient noise such as 50/60 Hz.
The nanomaterials such as gold nanowires or carbon nanotubes rely on low through-put cleanroom fabrication technology or high temperature sintering process and electrospun nano-fibers. These materials are not compatible to large scale textile manufacturing. Further, gold nanowires and carbon nanotubes cannot withstand the abrasive force encountered in a typical wearable application and tend to collapse.